“I’m coming for what’s mine. And there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop me.”
The message cut off.
I hurled the phone across the room. It hit the wall hard enough to crack, the sound too loud in the dark, and then I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my hands locked together, shaking so badly my teeth clicked.
Air wouldn’t settle in my lungs. Thoughts came apart.
I didn’t remember deciding to move, but suddenly I was in the hallway, my back pressed to the wall outside Mia’s room, staring through the crack in the door like it was the only thing holding me upright.
She was asleep. Curled in on herself. Smaller somehow. Younger.
Sleep softened her in a way daylight never did. The tension eased from her mouth, the guarded set of her shoulders gone.Just a child. Just my sister. Breathing slow and steady, unaware of the danger orbiting her.
My hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Todd’s words looped, relentless.When you work. When she’s alone.
He was watching. Counting. Waiting.
And the terror wasn’t loud—it was quiet and precise, the kind that settled into your bones and stayed there, whispering that one mistake was all it would take.
Footsteps in the hallway. Then Liam was there, lowering himself to the floor beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched.
“Riley? You okay?”
I shook my head. Couldn’t make the words come.
“Riley.” His hand found my arm, steadying. “Talk to me.”
“Todd,” I managed. “Voicemail. He knows our schedules. Knows when Mia’s alone. He said…” I couldn’t finish.
I heard him exhale slowly, the sound of someone choosing not to say what he was thinking. But he didn’t push. Didn’t demand details. He just stayed there, his hand warm on my arm, solid and present.
“Whatever it is,” his voice dropped, steady and close, like he was anchoring the words in place, “we’ll handle it. You hear me? We’ll handle it together.”
His face was half-lit by the moonlight coming through the window at the end of the hall.
I should argue. Should remind him of the temporary nature of everything we were building.
Instead, I let my head drop to his shoulder. Just barely. Just enough.
I felt him go still beside me, like he was afraid to move, afraid to break whatever fragile thing was forming between us.
The house settled around us, creaking and sighing the way old houses do. Neither of us spoke. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the silence of people who had run out of words and found something better on the other side.
Eventually, my shaking subsided. My breathing steadied. And I stayed there, my head on his shoulder, watching Mia sleep.
This wasn’t what we’d agreed to. This was dangerous—getting attached, letting him matter.
But I was too tired to fight it anymore.
I fell asleep against his shoulder somewhere around 3 AM.
I don’t know when it happened. One moment, I was watching Mia breathe; the next, I was waking up with Liam’s warmth solid beside me, dawn light creeping across the hallway floor.
He’d stayed. All night, he’d stayed.
His head had tilted against mine at some point, his breathing slow and even. We’d slept sitting up, propped against the wall, uncomfortable and awkward and somehow perfect.
